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DAVID BOWIE’S PERSONAL ART COLLECTION GOES ON SHOW AHEAD OF SOTHEBY’S AUCTION

November 04, 2016

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David Bowie’s personal art collection goes on show ahead of Sotheby’s auction. The collection will be publicly exhibited until November 10, with Bowie fans and art lovers alike getting a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to see the art owned by the star. Bowie, who passed away at the age of 69 in January, was famously private about his art collection, but was passionately engaged in the art world. The collection demonstrates a deep engagement in the work, with a love for the pieces placed far above financial investment.

Bowie also took an interest in contemporary African art. The piece Alexandra (1995), an assemblage by Beninese artist Romuald Hazoumé that harkens back to Duchamp, is estimated between £5,000 and £7,000. “On the whole it will be international artists who are relatively fresh names for people. It will be intriguing,” says Simon Hucker, Senior Specialist in Modern & Post-War British Art at Sotheby’s. For those interested in taking a peek firsthand, roughly 30 works—meant to “give a sense of how eclectic and unscripted” the collection is—will be exhibited in Hong Kong, New York, and Los Angeles in the lead-up to the London sale. “We’re being really careful to pick things that are representative of his tastes and his interests,” adds Hucker. “With this sale we’re doing what he would have liked to have done—get an international focus on these artists.”

Romuald Hazoumé, Alexandra, 1995. Image courtesy of Sotheby’s

Though hailed and beloved for his revolutionary musical career, Bowie’s infatuation with the visual arts is less well-known. “Art was, seriously, the only thing I’d ever wanted to own,” the musician remarked to the New York Times in 1998. Four years earlier, Bowie had been invited to join the editorial board of Modern Painters, for which he interviewed seminal British artists such Tracey Emin and Damien Hirst. Bowie also contributed reviews, including one of the 1995 Johannesburg Biennale. Though he studied art and design and was painter throughout his life, Bowie’s most famous intervention in the art world came when he threw a party at Jeff Koons’s Manhattan studio for fictional artist “Nat Tate,” a creation of novelist and friend William Boyd.